


Quia Pulvis Es

by Azar



Series: Ad Aeternum [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doggett says goodbye to his oldest friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quia Pulvis Es

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta-readers and Reyes consultants: Lisa K, Bel, Mischa and Jen--SHODDSisters who gave Monica a chance and helped me do her justice.
> 
> Title is Latin for "We Are But Dust."

At least I could still speak. One man here couldn't even form simple phrases--the tumor attacked the speech center of his brain before it metastasized. The doctors said it was a form of Aphasia: he may have known what he wanted to say, but he no longer knew what the words were to say it.

Still, I hated being so weak. I hated to have the people I love see me in my weakness, although better them than a stranger. Of course, I was never as strong as Dana, even back when my body was younger than hers, but at least I never felt so helpless. I didn't need someone beside me to help me stand, dress, even go to the bathroom. I certainly never needed a catheter.

I guess I was paying for all those years I "tried" to quit smoking.

Listen to me: I sound so bitter. I'm not a bitter woman. I've always tried to be positive, upbeat. And most of the time I succeeded. Even the approach of death doesn't usually put me in such a mood.

I wasn't afraid to die. Really. I had too much faith in what lies beyond to fear it. Somehow I'd always been certain I'll come back, that I'll be with these people I love again, in another life. Maybe Walter had already been born into his new life, and was waiting for me to catch up with him. I believe that. I have to. But the days when the boys were home in California and Ruth couldn't come to be with me were still hard.

I had one regret. I wished I knew what had happened to John. I knew he would leave when the sight of Mulder and Dana's happiness together got to be too much for him. But by the time he did, I was too busy falling in love with our boss to keep in touch with him like a true friend should have. When he wrote me, I wrote back. I always welcomed his visits. But we never went to visit him.

When the letters stopped coming, I barely even noticed until Ruth asked, "What happened to Uncle John?" I sent him one card then, only to discover he'd moved with no forwarding address.

"Mrs. Skinner?" My usual nurse, Kelly, rapped on the door. She didn't wait for me to speak before entering--it was understood that I would say something only if I don't want her to come in, and then just a simple "no." I could still speak, but with the coughs that often wracked my body, I didn't choose too as often as before.

"You have a visitor," she told me, leaving the door half-open behind her.

I nodded, feeling the tickle in my throat that indicated an impending spasm. "Ruth and Will?" I managed before it hit me. "Or Katherine?"

When I had finished trying to expel my riddled lungs, she smiled and shook her head. "No. I've never seen this guy before."

Guy? I didn't think there were any men in my life any longer that she wouldn't recognize. She'd met William and Danny and Jack, and all of Ruth and Will's kids. John Byers was somewhere in a home much like this one and didn't do much visiting, and Fox Mulder had left us behind only weeks ago.

"What name did he give?"

"Luke Doggett. He said you'd know the na--Mrs. Skinner, are you okay?"

My face must have gone white, blanched with the sudden, overwhelming fear of a memory long buried. No. Impossible. After all these years, had John's son come back from the dead to haunt me?

Then I understood, or thought I did. Back from the dead...could it be?

"Monica?"

Oh god. Forty years without hearing it, I'd still know that voice in a syllable. That mind. Jesus, that face.

He was standing behind Kelly now, and he hadn't changed a day since I last saw him, not one new line or gray hair. Just like...

Just like Dana.

Hot damn; there was justice in the world after all.

"No, Kell. I'm fine," I murmured. For a minute she still stood there, uncertain, until enough of my shock wore off to smile at the one man I never expected to see again in this life. Whatever her concern, she backed away and let John shut the door behind her.

John Doggett. I stared at him in wonder, feeling as shocked as if I hadn't already known an immortal for the past forty years. I never knew Dana before she had the Gift. I had no image in my mind of her besides the beautiful but careworn young woman she's always been through our acquaintance. But I remembered John when he was a much younger man, and I saw him age overnight the day we found his little boy's body. But somehow, sometime between when we met and now, he'd lost that ability to age. And my guess was it had something to do with his time on the X-Files.

I could see him watching me too, taking in the silver hair--I gave up on dyeing it years ago--and the deep lines that creased my face as they never would his. He noticed the veins bulging out on my hands under skin made thin and baggy by age and illness. I was always younger than him. I never thought I'd live to outgrow him.

"Monica..." he stepped closer to my bed.

I couldn't help it. I had to touch his face for an instant, just to reassure myself that I wasn't going senile after all. "My God, John...how? How did you know I was here?"

"That gangly daughter of yours told me yesterday at the Smithsonian." He shook his head in awe. "I knew Ruthie'd be tall, Mon, but she towers over Dana like you used to."

I beamed with motherly pride before the significance of his words really sank in. Ruth...he'd talked to Ruth...and at the exhibit! That meant he must know about William. And Dana...he called her Dana--

I struggled to sit up just a little, but his hands fell on my shoulders. "No...don't. I'm family, remember? Don't push yourself on my account."

There had always been a deep, abiding affection between John and I, even when we drove each other crazy. Some in our lives even tried to interpret it as romantic, but that always made me laugh. He could never have felt that way about me, and knowing that--sensing it--kept me from falling too hard as well. Though he had a unique ability to live in the present, to "leave the past in the past" as he says, no parent ever gets over losing a child. And no romance could ever be built on that foundation, at least not in his life. Instead, he took me into his soul as a friend. In some ways I was almost his protege, even though he followed me into the Bureau.

"You think if I hadn't seen a member of my family in forty years, I wouldn't at least try to sit up for them?" I retorted, grinning. I shook my head again, still marveling. "John...I almost can't believe it."

"That means a lot, coming from you," he teased.

"Don't tell me you're still a stubborn ass about the paranormal--you are paranormal," I pointed out.

He gave me a look that quite plainly said, "No shit, Sherlock," then sighed from the bottom of his soul. "Yeah, I figured that out about forty years ago."

That long ago? It had taken Dana almost five years after John's departure to put all of the pieces together. How had he known?

"Is that why you really left, then? I thought it was about Dana--"

He looked confused for a split second, then shook his head. "No. I didn't get that part for a few more years. But it's pretty hard to deny bein' brought back from the dead."

Oddly enough, that seems to have been a common experience in our little circle. I think I'm probably the only one who was never resurrected, other than the Gunmen. Walter had a near-death experience back in Vietnam, Mulder got brought back twice, maybe more--though they didn't get eternal life in the bargain--Dana had her encounter with Alfred Felig, and John...well, this was news. I guess he didn't confide in me as much as I'd thought.

"When did it happen?"

"About...two, two and a half months after Kersh sent me down there." "Down there" meaning the X-Files' basement office, of course. "I was followin' a lead on Mulder's case...or at least I thought it was a lead. Turned out it was a hell of a lot more than that, and less at the same time."

Well. If I had to make him relive that dark time, at least I ought to do my best to keep my end of things light. I laid a hand on his arm, grinning. "Now this I've got to hear."

We talked for almost two hours. I told him about my family, about watching the boys and Ruth grow up strong and proud and handsome, so much like their father. I told him about losing Walter to a heart attack ten years ago, and how Dana for once took on the role of spirit-lifter to drag me out of my crippling grief. I told him about my diagnosis, and how I came to be here in spite of the kids' protests that they could take care of me. I always believed that independence was the greatest gift I gave them--I wasn't about to take that away by dying slowly in their care.

He told me about the man who saved his life and took his death forever. He told me what he'd been doing for thirty-five years since the last time I saw him, what it was like to live in complete isolation from the rest of humanity because he couldn't share that one inevitability, death. And he told me about the day that isolation ended when he looked into Dana's eyes again at Mulder's funeral...

"You know," I wound up to pitch a theory at him that I was almost certain he'd shoot down. "I've always said everything happens for a reason. That nothing is random. Maybe this is why you lost Luke."

The sharp look I earned for that remark was not unexpected, and probably not uncalled for.

"Listen to me. If you hadn't lost your family, you would never have left New York. You would never have joined the Bureau, never met Dana. You would never have gone to that town.

"Maybe, John...maybe you and Dana were meant to be together, forever."

Okay, so sue me, I'm a romantic.

He just smiled indulgently. Despite of the depth of his feelings for her, it wouldn't be easy for him to accept such an idea. He's too selfless to ever allow himself to hope for a chance with a grieving widow. "Monica, believe it or not, I didn't come here to talk about Dana."

Uh oh, he was back on the guilt wagon. Yup, in about two seconds, he'd bring up the soul eater again. "I should've trusted you with this forty years ago. I owe you an apology for that."

I could've laughed and told him not to be ridiculous, but he was right. He should have trusted me. But I should've tried harder not to let him slip away from us too.

"I know." I just smiled at him and let that show my forgiveness. "I'm glad you came."

I didn't tell him that he was my only regret, because that changed the second he walked into my room. I didn't need to wonder anymore what happened to John Doggett. He found his destiny, just like I found mine. Whether he was ready to accept it or not.

Kelly knocked again. "Mr. Doggett? I'm sorry, but I need to get Mrs. Skinner into the bath, I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

He rose to follow her instructions, and I stopped him. I might not have much time left, but I was going to give at least part of what I did have to convincing him. Unlike John--the sweet, stubborn, skeptical fool--I knew a wake-up call from fate when I saw one. Destiny doesn't just throw two people together for eternity, especially when at least one of them has feelings for the other, and not expect them to do something with it.

"John--"

Blue eyes deep enough to drown in locked on me. My voice was soft, private. Hopefully too low for anyone but him to hear.

"Dana and Mulder had half a century together. But he's gone now, and she's still young in a lot of ways. I'm not saying you shouldn't let her grieve. But she won't grieve forever. It's okay for her to move on, especially with someone in her life who loves her as much as you always have." My hand tightened on his arm. "Promise me you won't throw that away."

I could tell he was still pondering my words when he left.

Watching him go, I realized I knew I'd never see him again. But it was okay. We'd made our peace, and I gave him something to think about, which was about the best parting gift I could offer him. If you'll forgive an old woman her cliches, my work here was done.

"Ready?" Kelly asked as soon as he'd gone, her eyes twinkling.

After a long moment, I nodded. "Yeah. I'm ready to go."


End file.
